
Cong Josie – Cong the Singer
Genre: Post-Punk, New wave, Alternative Rock
Suicide didn’t exactly launch themselves into the music business. They set off towards it like serial killers hoping they’d get found. They made all other punk bands look like spoiled children. Their music belonged to a world that was fascinating, yet few would have wanted to enter.
I am sure that Alan Vega and Martin Rev would have started their group today, they would be internet trolls, using the wide web’s potential and the desire for people to be outraged, as their tools. Unlike real life in the 1970s, where Vega and Rev constantly risked attacks and bodily harm, the worst that could happen to them now is to have their social media accounts suspended. A certain price must be paid.
Cong Josie, who Alt77 has reviewed before, is the cowboy troll-provocateur of the strange, modern age. Cong the Singer is the kind of music that your local church might ban you from listening to. Not because of the message per se, but because it sounds and looks menacing, like the work of someone off their rocker. You don’t get many of those in the music world these days. Most of the likely candidates are busy living off the grid or running investment funds. Let’s treasure the ones that we have.
Janis – Where Will You Go
Genre: Post-Punk, Noise Rock, Alternative Rock
It’s fun to try and imagine a great festival bill that tends to all of your music-loving needs. It’s a fun exercise when riding for a long time on buses, trains, or aeroplanes. One of the best bills that my understimulated brain can come up with is one where the headliners are either The Birthday Party or The Fall, groups whose concerts usually culminated in some kind of punch-up, and all the other groups on the bill are generic heavy-metal units singing about bikes, pillaging, and the importance of good hair care.
I try to imagine the scene, but each time it descends into violence like the pinnacle of a Quentin Tarantino movie. It’s not the bikers starting it either. Their version of violence has as much to do with reality as Harry Potter novels. However, faced with the kind of genuine menace and aggression invoked by previously two listed bands, I imagine they would run for the gates, trampling themselves in the process.
They rarely make them like that anymore. But, wait. There is hope and, predictably, it comes from Germany. Janis’ Where Will You Go sounds like the music made by people who start bar fights for a hobby. It sounds like music made by instruments being dragged by trucks through the streets. This is music that sounds like Berlin, the atypical capital of Germany and the place from which Janis hails. It rains from June to June here, or if not the music makes it sound like it does.